


Left With No Trace

by Anti_kate



Series: Without the Pleasure of a Scar [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 1920s, After the holy water scene, Angst, Berlin in the Weimar Years, But there is a happy ending coming, Gender what even is it, Historical, Idiots in Love, Jealous Aziraphale (Good Omens), M/M, Male Pronouns for Crowley, No seriously it is sad, Sad smut, Slight non-com if you squint, Temptation, The ending is not exactly happy, This is really sad, WW1, did i mention this is sad?, porn with too many feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:28:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22763986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anti_kate/pseuds/Anti_kate
Summary: Aziraphale’s heart didn’t leap so much as plummet from a cliff-top, flinging itself towards certain doom.Aziraphale struggles with his feelings after his fight with Crowley over the holy water, until they meet by chance in Berlin.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Without the Pleasure of a Scar [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1636696
Comments: 61
Kudos: 186





	Left With No Trace

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you again to NarumiKaiko for beta-ing this pile of sadness. It’s sad, ok? 
> 
> The title is from Michael Ondaatje’s _The Cinnamon Peeler._
> 
> “what good is it  
> to be the lime burner's daughter  
> left with no trace  
> as if not spoken to in the act of love  
> as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar.”

The first time Aziraphale made holy water for Crowley, he’d taken it straight to the porcelain sink in his back room and dumped it out of the pitcher immediately, and had stood trembling with the horror of it, unable to move. It had taken some time before he noticed he’d cracked the pitcher in his hands. That had been in 1869, when it had finally sunk in that Crowley wasn’t going to reply to his occasional notes. They’d spent years, decades, centuries without contact before, but Aziraphale knew this was different. The quality of the silence between them now was thick and heavy, and that sense he’d always had – that Crowley was always lurking somewhere around the corner – was fundamentally changed. 

He tried to take holy water to Crowley several times after that. Sometimes he’d managed to get a cork-stoppered bottle out of the bookshop, but then he’d end up pouring it into a duck pond or throwing the whole bottle into the Thames. He knew that wasn’t very angelic of him, but it wasn’t as if the Thames wasn’t already half-garbage. 

On one occasion he actually made it to the Mayfair street where Crowley’s fashionable home stood, but had poured the holy water out in someone’s window box of half-dead geraniums. The flowers had instantly bloomed, a lush and verdant display of brilliant jade and crimson, which only served to irritate Aziraphale the more. 

He’d made one last attempt, some time in the early 1890s. He’d filled an old wine bottle with water and waved his hand over it and imbued it with all the holiness and grace he could manage, along with other things too, the memory of the first time he tasted honey, the feel of the warmth of sunlight on skin, the glitter of raindrops on the green leaves of the garden, the pattern of stars in the Eagle Nebula.

_All these things I will give to thee, if thou fall down and worship me._

And then he’d felt a deep, red-tinged rage well up inside him, that Crowley could be so selfish as to want to ... to leave him _alone_ ... and now he was alone anyway, and who knew what Crowley was doing right now and it _wasn’t fair_ that he’d even asked Aziraphale in the first place. 

How could he think that Aziraphale would just hand him the means to his own destruction? Did he really think that after all this time, Aziraphale didn’t care what happened to him?

He’d been so terribly angry that he’d knocked the bottle off the table, and it had smashed on the floor, a glittering mess on the bookshop parquet.

The anger was gone as quickly as it had come, replaced by shame. He was used to feeling ashamed, at least. He miracled the whole mess away and vowed never to attempt it again. He couldn’t do it, no matter how much he wanted to make things better between them. 

He couldn’t give Crowley what he wanted. 

And anyway, making repeated batches of holy water was exactly the sort of thing Heaven would take note of, and disapprove. He’d probably stretched his luck enough already.

Instead he’d continued sending Crowley short letters, suggestions that he’d be open to invitations to lunch, little hints about shows coming up, nonsense blatherings about this or that book or what-have-you. 

They all went unanswered, and he filled his time with his literary friends. He went to salons and took magic lessons and learned the gavotte. He even joined a club. 

The club had proved diverting, even if it also at times tested his own personal views about just how angels should conduct their relationships with humans. He knew what was happening, of course, he was no innocent, but he’d tried very hard to make sure the men knew he wasn’t there for _that._ He’d slipped up, only the once, before coming to his senses. That pretty man with the dark auburn hair had followed him into the back room and he’d found himself gasping Crowley’s name into someone else’s mouth. He’d stilled the man’s hands on the falls of his trousers, made his apologies, and did not return to the club for a few weeks. 

Then there was his friend Oscar’s trial in 1895, and then, only a few short years later, he’d found himself in Paris for the funeral. Afterwards, he’d been wandering down some rue or other in Le Marais and stopped in front of a silversmith’s, and saw a display of what turned out to be cigarette lighters, and stopped. He and Crowley had both always liked human things, and while he had a weakness for books and snuffboxes, Crowley liked cleverness and modernity, fast things and new things, clockwork and contraptions.

Yes, Crowley would like these objects very much, he thought. He imagined his long fingers opening the lid and flicking the flint wheel, and lifting it to light a cigarette held loosely between his lips. 

He’d never given Crowley anything before. 

Giving a demon gifts was so far beyond what heaven would allow that it had never been something he’d seriously considered, until his eyes touched on the display of little silver boxes, laid out like offerings to some pagan god. Certainly, he’d found plenty of things over the years in markets and little shops that had made him think of Crowley. Beads when the humans first started making them, silver circlets in Mesopotamia, torcs in Gaul, a cloak pin, a belt buckle. Goblets. Ridiculous books on demonology. A ring, once, in Egypt, in the form of a tiny snake. He’d bought that one, and then had no idea what to do with it. It must be in a box somewhere in the shop. The gift of rings had long been symbolic for humans, and he certainly couldn’t wear it himself, so he wasn’t sure what he’d been thinking at the time. 

One of the lighters caught his eye – silver, not too big, a gold serpent curled on one side. Before he could talk himself out of it, he’d gone into the shop and bought it. He’d asked for it to be engraved, too. “To C from A.” That was certainly vague enough, wasn’t it? Should it fall into the wrong hands, it wouldn’t be incriminating. Crowley could pass it off to his infernal brethren as being from a human admirer if he ever needed to. Plenty of people with names starting with A. 

It was a measly message, he knew that. He wasn’t sure what else he could do. Apart from the unthinkable, the literally undoable. 

The silversmith packaged the lighter into a black box, lined with red satin, and he’d carried it in his pocket back to London. Before he could talk himself out of it he’d paid a boy to take it to Crowley’s, and then he’d waited, foolishly, his chest constricting every time the shop bell tinkled and the door opened. It was never Crowley, and it was never a messenger, and even though Aziraphale filled his days and his nights well enough, there were still the dead hours in the early mornings to get through. 

But at least this way he knew Crowley was still in the world. Just not anywhere near Aziraphale, and apparently content to keep it that way.

Aziraphale’s orders, meanwhile, had slowed to barely anything. Heaven seemed almost bewildered by the world humans had created, and so it became months between assignments, and then years. Aziraphale still submitted his reports, dutifully logged his works, received the odd censure about “frivolous misuse of miracles” for all the little things he did, but he kept doing them anyway. Gold sovereigns dropped into beggar’s hands. Starving children adopted by caring families. Hacking, tubercular coughs that came good with the light of day. A carriage overturned in the street, and not a hair harmed on anyone’s heads.

And he was left, more often than not, completely to his own devices.

Wasn’t that what he’d wanted?

He went alone to the Egyptian Hall to John Maskelyne’s last show there in 1905, and then a few years later he’d been in the front row when Harry Houdini had performed his Water Torture trick, and he’d gasped along with the human audience at the _danger_ of it, the thrill of watching the man writhe in the tank under the hot stage lights. He even took lessons from Maskelyne, and he spent long nights in the back room of the shop practicing, imagining Crowley’s horrified face at the whole thing. 

He imagined a whole speech he’d deliver when Crowley scoffed, something about humans and their artifice and how delightful it was to try to do something he could do for real in a pretend way, but he never got to deliver it, because Crowley still wasn’t there. 

And then the war.

The Archduke was murdered in the car in the narrow streets of Sarajevo, and Europe was shuddering on its foundations a few weeks later. 

One day in August Aziraphale came home day from a fretful walk in the park, newspaper tucked under his arm blaring the headline of German troops crossing the border into Belgium, to find a note resting in the middle of the bookshop floor. 

For a moment he thought it might be from Crowley, but then it glimmered gold and he knew it wasn’t. He picked it up and opened it, read it, and felt sick.

_Orders at this time: no interference. Level four and below miracles allowed only. Await further instruction – Gabriel._

* * *

**Berlin, New Year’s Eve, 1929**

* * *

The ballroom of the Haus Vaterland was, according to the drunk man sitting beside Aziraphale, the Garden of Eden. Marble columns that looked somewhat tree-like stretched up to a domed ceiling above, and there were silver palm decorations everywhere. The lighting was low enough that they disappeared into the ceiling. 

A jazz band played something aggressively syncopated and the dance floor was packed with humans in suits and drop-waisted dresses. All of them moving like the world might end in a few hours from now when the year turned over.

“I can assure you, there was much less dancing in Eden,” Aziraphale said to the man, speaking loudly over the brass section.

“Then it can’t have been much fun,” the man laughed into his drink. “Happy New Year’s!”

Aziraphale raised his glass in return and took a drink of his Brandy Alexander. He really didn’t want to be here, but he’d received an actual order from Heaven, and now he was in Berlin to find some struggling singer and deliver a blessing. She was, according to the file, to move to Switzerland and join a nunnery. It was nothing – a trifle, maddeningly tiny. 

_We could actually be doing something good._

He watched the swirl of bodies, laughing faces, heads thrown back. 

It wasn’t as if there weren’t things that could be done – the stock market had crashed just a few months before, and it was obvious where all that was heading, and there was the brewing influenza epidemic, and unrest everywhere, the rebellion in China – but no, heaven wanted him here, to send some woman to a nunnery. 

Treacherous thoughts, those. He shut his eyes, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and very deliberately put them aside. 

He’d find the woman, see in the New Year, and go home. 

“I say,” he said to the drunk man, “would you know the way to the club called Der Blaue Engel?”

The man next to him laughed again. “That place! You’re leaving heaven to go to hell?”

Aziraphale plucked the knowledge from the man’s brain – out onto Potsdamer Platz, left then right and down into the seedier parts of the city – and didn’t bother responding. 

Outside, the rain had turned into dreary sleet, and even though he didn’t need to he turned his collar up against the bite of it. There were plenty of people still on the streets and the electric lights gleamed on the wet pavement. It wasn’t far. But if the Haus Vaterland was a vast edifice of a pleasure palace, cafes and restaurants and ballrooms and parlours and a dome with pulsing glowing lights that seemed to spin with the music, dioramas of pastoral scenes, even a room where there was a fake rainstorm – the The Blue Angel was a club of a very different sort. It was small, located in a narrow side street, little more than a doorway with a sign overhead, lights blue and red and dim.

Aziraphale took off his hat as he stepped inside. It was dimly lit, with a small bar and a stage at one end, tables with white cloths giving way to a dance floor. Beaded curtains led to other rooms. The whole place was washed in harsh artificial light in pinks and reds.

The clientele were more shabbily dressed than at the Haus Vaterland, and Aziraphale’s own white suit seemed out of place. It was crowded and almost stuffily hot after the frigid night air.

The beneficiary of heaven’s grace was in here somewhere, he could feel her... and also a prickle of something else. It itched at the back of his neck, and he tugged at his collar, irritably. The whole city felt like that, like something sharp rubbing at his skin. He didn’t like it, any more than he liked the hungry faces in the streets, the aggressive young men crowding around street corners. 

He’d do his job and get out of here, back to the familiarity of London and the bookshop. But first a drink, he decided, weaving through the tables to the bar.

A young man sitting at the bar turned and flashed him a smile, and he nodded politely back. 

“I haven’t seen you here before,” the man said, slightly slurred. His eyes flickered up and down Aziraphale’s white suit, and Aziraphale immediately felt as though he were being measured.

“I’m just visiting,” Aziraphale said primly. He waved to the bartender and ordered a sidecar. 

“Ah? English?” The man – barely more than a boy, really – leaned closer. “Come to experience the famous Berlin nightlife?”

Aziraphale pulled his cigarette case out of his pocket. “Something like that,” he said distractedly, still trying to locate the woman he was meant to bless. 

Gabriel had noted on his last performance review that smoking was very much _not_ acceptable angelic activity, and he’d tried to stop, but in this bar with the smoke low and heavy in the air he felt he needed to fit in, and it gave him something to do with his hands, so he pulled one out guiltily. Just this once, he promised himself, and then he’d be better about following heaven’s rules.

“I could show you some of the sights,” the young man said, leaning in closer, one hand coming to rest on Aziraphale’s wrist. 

Aziraphale opened his mouth to politely demur, but someone stepped in between them, and Aziraphale’s heart didn’t leap so much as plummet from a cliff-top, flinging itself towards certain doom.

Crowley. 

“Off you go now, Karl,” Crowley said, gently, and the boy’s eyes took on a puzzled look and he slipped away into the crowd. And then he turned and held up a cigarette lighter in one slender hand. “Light, angel?”

No, not _a_ lighter, but the one Aziraphale had bought in Paris and sent to his townhouse almost thirty years ago.

The sight of it made something very strange happen to Aziraphale’s breathing. He was aware he was smiling rather stupidly at Crowley. The demon flicked the lighter and the flame flared, and Aziraphale bent his head over and sucked in air, the tip of the cigarette flaring briefly, the smoke hot in his mouth and throat. 

“Than–” he began, then caught the word, swallowed it down. Crowley hated being thanked. “Well,” he said instead, rather helplessly, trying to school his face into something less delighted. 

What he wanted to say was, _you’ve got the lighter! And why haven’t you returned my messages? What happened in the war? Were you safe? Have you forgiven me? Did you miss me? Are you happy to see me?_

Crowley insinuated himself further in front of Aziraphale, leaning against the bar.

“Didn’t think I’d see you in a cross-dressing bar in Berlin, angel,” Crowley said. It should have been sly and teasing, but Crowley’s voice was too flat, too harsh. 

And with that, the weight of the last 60 years pressed down again with desperate force, crushing Aziraphale’s hopeless delight at the sight of him. 

“I’m here on official business,” he said, aware of just how ridiculous he sounded, his free hand clenching against the fabric of his jacket. He tried to look away from Crowley’s long form, but he couldn’t help the sweep of his eyes, up and down and up again. 

Crowley was wearing a fashionable black dress, layers of beads over something diaphanous, chiffon perhaps. The fashions had changed so rapidly since the war, revealing much more skin than Aziraphale had seen for centuries. 

Crowley’s dress was low-cut, thin straps dipping over his collarbones and shoulders. It was scandalously short, stopping just above the knee, and below that were those long legs in black silk stockings that Aziraphale absolutely did not look at, at least not for more than a moment. 

His carmine hair was curled around his face, dark red lipstick outlined his mouth, and small dark glasses obscured his eyes. Aziraphale couldn’t help but think it suited him much more than sideburns had.

“Of course you are,” the demon said, putting the lighter into a tiny little beaded bag, before turning to the bartender. “I’ll have a gin fizz.”

“And what are you doing here?” 

“The usual.”

“Of course,” Aziraphale echoed. He took a sip of his drink and winced at the quality of the cognac. The bathtub gin he’d had in America last year had been better than this.

“There’s a bunch of men here from one of the political parties. Got to get them all in compromising positions. There’ll be a man with a camera along later, lots of evidence, plenty of blackmail material.”

“I see. Rather tawdry, isn’t it?”

“I’m a demon. I like tawdry,” Crowley said, leaning forward, the beads shifting around his slim body. The pattern they made was somehow serpentine.

Crowley was looking at him, Aziraphale could tell that even through his glasses. The quality of his attention was like the radiant heat from a fire, and Aziraphale felt colour rising in his cheeks. Their arms were close enough that it would be easy to lean in and press against him, or he could turn his body on the stool and let his knee brush Crowley’s long thigh. But he didn’t, because he hadn’t, not once over so many thousands of years. Not when they’d sat side-by-side by a wadi in the desert, not in the hanging gardens of Babylon, not in a draughty tent in Wessex. But he wanted to. He wanted to reach out and stroke the line of Crowley’s throat. And he couldn’t.

“My dear, if I’d known you were going to be here...” he managed to get out, pushing all those thoughts down as far as they could go.

“You’d’ve what? Avoided the whole bloody city?” Again, Crowley’s voice wasn’t light and teasing at all. 

“No not at all – I mean. I would have...” he paused and drank again. “I don’t think much of German meals, far too much cabbage, but they do make some scrumptious cakes. Lovely with coffee.”

Crowley tilted his head. “New Year’s Day tomorrow, won’t be much open. Anyway. Going out for coffee and cake sounds awfully like fraternizing to me.”

Aziraphale supposed he deserved that, but it didn’t make it sting any less, and he couldn’t think of a reply that wasn’t harsh and angry. _You asked me for a loaded gun, and I was supposed to say yes?_ And that seemed like exactly the worst thing he could say, so he dropped his eyes.

“And I suppose you’ve been awfully busy,” Aziraphale said after too much time had passed. “What with everything.”

“Everything?”

Aziraphale fluttered a hand. “Well. The war, for a start–”

Crowley hissed, body tensing in a way that was deeply obvious given the revealing nature of his attire. “If you’re going to try and pin that bloody mess on me–”

Oh this was already going so badly.

“Of course not,” Aziraphale said, miserably, wishing for what must be the hundred thousandth time that he had the courage to even put a hand on Crowley’s arm. “My dear boy. I just meant there’s been so much going on. It wasn’t an accusation.”

Crowley’s face was almost a snarl. “And I suppose your lot couldn’t have stepped in before twenty million people died?”

Aziraphale’s blood felt turned to ice, and for a moment, he remembered standing in a bombed out church in a little town near Amiens in France, looking at the bodies of the villagers who’d died there in the shelling. 

Whatever showed on his face caused Crowley’s anger to drain away, his mouth opening in dismay, and Aziraphale looked away. He remembered another bitter argument as rain filled the valley below them, Crowley’s righteous anger flaring in his amber and sunlight eyes. 

_Her work is perfect, for all Her ways are just; a God of faithfulness and without injustice, righteous and upright is She._

“Fuck – angel, I’m–”

Aziraphale drained the last of his drink, doing his best to banish the memory and bring himself back to the present, to this dingy little club. He looked towards the stage, where the band had struck up something fast and frantic. A woman in a tuxedo was singing, and dancers were pressing in thick on the floor.

“I rather think,” he said, as calmly as he could, “that if either of us could have changed things, we would have.”

He stood up, unsteadily, risked another look at Crowley, who was staring back at him, something Aziraphale couldn’t read on his face. He wished he could rip those dark glasses off his face, see his eyes again.

“Good night then,” he said instead. 

He didn’t give Crowley a chance to respond and strode out of the club, through the humans and their mad whirling, back out into the cold night. Was it midnight yet? Had the year slipped past again, while he and Crowley had danced their own ridiculous steps? 

He made it halfway down the icy strasse before he decided to turn back. He couldn’t leave it like this, not again, and risk another sixty years of silence. 

The world was spinning faster and faster, everything going so fast, the motor cars and aeroplanes and bullets from machine guns, and he wanted to cling to the familiar, to keep the things he loved close, to stretch his wing out over the bookshop, over Soho, over London, over the world. 

And Crowley too. Or perhaps... Crowley most of all. 

He stepped back into the club. The music was something else again now, something slower and thicker, the woman in the tuxedo’s voice low and husky. The lights seemed to have been dimmed, the haze of cigarette smoke curling around everything. It almost seemed to shimmer and glitter in the air, dark threads of it coiling around human bodies, men and women breathing it in as they laughed and laid their hands on each other, fingers sliding over skin, hips pressing together, mouths opening, tongues flicking over lips– 

He knew then what it was. 

He’d done enough temptations himself, over the last thousand years. Not usually like this, though, and he’d always suspected Crowley hadn’t given him the more ... carnal assignments ... on purpose, but he still knew. The smoke drifted, languorous and slow, and beneath the smell of cigarettes and perfume and aftershave, the very air smelled like Crowley, a hint of something burnt. He suspected this was what Crowley would taste of too, and then he was imagining how the caress of Crowley’s fingers tracing over his skin would feel–

 _Good lord._ He gritted his teeth. He was an angel, he was made of stronger stuff than weak human flesh, he knew how this whole business worked. 

He’d just apologise to Crowley, get it all out, set things right, and then he’d leave.

He straightened his bow tie and walked through the press of bodies, searching for the shine of rust-red hair a good head above the crowd. The dance floor was an almost impenetrable knot and he could see where it was going, the groping and kissing and shirts being unbuttoned and dresses hiked up, and he stepped instead around and through a doorway screened by a beaded curtain. A dim hallway, more red lighting that made his eyes ache, more couples and threesomes and more, all pressed into each other, here a mouth on a throat, there a hand working under a layer of clothing. 

Another doorway, and he knew Crowley was within.

He saw him immediately, sitting on some low and shabby divan in between two men. One of them had an arm curled around Crowley’s shoulders, a hand dipped beneath neckline of his dress, the other had a hand halfway up his thigh, his dress rucked up. 

They were laughing, or at least the men were, Crowley’s face was blank, bored even.

Aziraphale knew he should turn and walk away, and not think about the fact that these braying fools got to touch Crowley, and he couldn’t, and how he’d worship him if he got the chance – and that was blasphemy wasn’t it, but it was too late now, and he’d not been struck down yet for his blasphemous thoughts. 

He could feel the temptation Crowley had laid out for the humans in the club, a low murmur beyond the range of human hearing, a voice whispering in the darkness. _Let me in._

Crowley’s head snapped around and he saw Aziraphale. He didn’t move.

That was the thing about temptation, wasn’t it? It wasn’t a compulsion. Just a suggestion. A question. Always a choice. Perhaps, this time, a revelation. _Here is the thing you’ve wanted for so long. The forbidden fruit. Will you reach for it?_

He made the choice, let the dark thing in, and crossed the room.

“There you are, darling,” he said, and Crowley’s mouth made a surprised shape.

“She’s with us,” one of the men said, tightening his grip on Crowley’s leg. 

“Not tonight,” Aziraphale replied, distractedly, barely able to drag his eyes away from the lines of Crowley’s jaw, the soft place where neck met shoulder. 

The men both looked as if they were going to argue. Aziraphale lifted his hand and they were both struck by the urgent desire to leave the room.

And Crowley was standing too, all furious angles and jutting bones and hissing, a viper poked with a stick. 

“I’m trying to work here, angel, and if you think you can just walk in and chase off my targets–“ he snapped, crowding into him, and Aziraphale couldn’t stand it a moment longer, his skin felt too hot and too tight, he just wanted to touch him. Just once, just this once. Just let himself, once.

“Can I kiss you?” He said in a rush, only just stopping himself from doing it without permission, hands clenched into fists by his side.

“What?” Crowley gaped, and then there was a moment, too long, nothing but the two of them, as it had always been. For ever and ever, world without end. 

One of them must have moved, or maybe it was both of them, because while Aziraphale reached out finally and slid one hand along Crowley’s jaw, he felt Crowley’s hands on the lapels of his jacket, pulling, not pushing, and then they were fitted together as if they belonged. Crowley’s mouth opening against his, warmer and sweeter and softer than he’d imagined. There was nothing hard about this, nothing broken-edged or cruel, just the tilt of Crowley’s head to deepen the kiss, the flicker of a not-at-all-human tongue along his bottom lip, the press of his glasses against Aziraphale’s cheek.

It was wonderful and over far too quickly, because Crowley’s hands were flat against his chest, and pushing so hard he stumbled back. 

“Fuck!” Crowley snarled and Aziraphale was blinking against the ferocity of his anger, again. “You walked back in here and you’ve breathed it all in, haven’t you? And now I’ve bloody tempted you on top of _everything_ else–“

“Crowley,” Aziraphale reached out but the demon skittered back. 

“Don’t,” he said. 

“Crowley,” he tried again, but Crowley’s hand wrapped hot around his arm, and then he snapped his fingers and they were elsewhere, a vertiginous blink. The sounds of the club were gone, gone too was the glittering air and the soft red light and the smell of desire, and instead they were somewhere quiet and dim. He vaguely took in the shapes of furniture, patterned wallpaper, a lamp in one corner, but he couldn’t focus, all he wanted to do was reach out, and he did, and his hands were sliding down Crowley’s bare arms. 

But Crowley paced instantly away from him, the beads on his dress whipping about. Aziraphale watched him move with the same fascination he’d always felt, only now he didn’t want to turn away (he’d never _wanted_ to turn away, he’d always _had to)._

Crowley rounded on him again, yanking his glasses off.

“You need to get rid of it,” he grabbed Aziraphale’s hands again. His grip wasn’t gentle, but Aziraphale leaned into it. “The way you would too much wine, or ... bloody hell that time you smoked opium. Like that.”

Aziraphale took a deep breath. He could break Crowley’s grip, he knew, and the image flashed through his mind – wrenching his hands away and taking Crowley’s arms, pulling him to the floor, pinning him beneath him and pressing down... he was hard and aching, he wanted – no that was wrong, he _wanted_ yes but not like that _–_

“I don’t want that,” he said, as much to himself as Crowley.

Crowley’s fingers hot as brands, his eyes wide. “Aziraphale. This isn’t a game. Please.”

Pleading. Crowley didn’t plead, he insinuated and teased and snapped and mocked, but he didn’t beg. 

“All right,” Aziraphale said.

He exhaled into his own hands, the darkness of the temptation sliding out with his breath like mist on a cold morning. It glittered and then turned to fine grey dust, and then it was completely gone.

It was, Aziraphale thought, remarkably like sobering up in how unpleasant he felt all at once. Unmoored. And then the crashing regret of it, too, that he’d taken such liberties, and put unwelcome hands on his friend.

Crowley hadn’t moved, but his hands were looser, and Aziraphale lifted his head to reluctantly meet his gaze. 

He missed his eyes. He’d never realised it before. Two thousand years since Crowley had started wearing those glasses. He missed more than that, too, he missed Crowley from before, too. That openness he’d had, that sense of surprise, the way his face had betrayed his emotions so easily. When was the last time he’d seen him give that delighted laugh? 

Humans had trite sayings about how time healed, but time hadn’t smoothed Crowley, it’d made him more jagged, given him wounds that had festered, scraped away at him, harrowed him down to the bones. 

And how many more decades would it be now, with _this_ festering between them? 

Aziraphale didn’t know, and he didn’t know how to set it right.

“I’ll go now,” he said, with what little dignity he could muster, and pulled gently at his hands.

“You don’t have to,” Crowley said. “I’ve got some whiskey here.” He let go of Aziraphale’s hands and pulled his sunglasses from somewhere. It was a relief not to feel the pressure of his eyes, but also a loss. 

“Ah,” Aziraphale said. “I probably shouldn’t.” He looked around, finally, at where they were. An apartment, sparsely decorated with low, modern looking furniture. Where was the door?

“‘Course. Can’t nearly succumb to demonic temptation twice in one night,” Crowley said, that edge in his voice that made Aziraphale want to disappear, bury himself in a book for the next decade or so.

“Indeed.” He said, weakly, and stepped towards what he thought was the door. “Well. Goodbye. Again.”

He risked a glance at Crowley, who hadn’t moved. He could hold himself impossibly still at times. He nodded at the demon, who didn’t acknowledge him, and opened the door. Crowley still didn’t say anything, and he stepped out into a dimly lit hallway and pulled the door behind him. It shut with awful finality. 

Somewhere nearby he heard cheering. It must be midnight. Another year. How many more did they have? Did it number in the thousands still, or the hundreds, or were things rushing to a head even faster than that?

There had been so many days in the last few decades when he’d expected to step out of the shop and see the sun turn as black as sackcloth, the moon as red as blood, and a third of the earth burned.

Not enough time to spare, but he could still put things right.

He turned back to Crowley’s door, but it swung inwards away from him, and Crowley was standing there. They looked at each other for too long.

Crowley tilted his head, and Aziraphale saw his chest heave beneath the black chiffon and beads of the dress, and something shivery coursed through him. The desire he felt for Crowley was still there, it had always been there, just locked in a chest, enclosed in ice, buried under a mountain. 

But the lock was broken, the ice melted, the mountain worn to dust. 

“Are you coming back in or what?” Crowley said, finally. Aziraphale moved a step closer. Not quite across the threshold. 

“I think first I should apologise – I am so sorry, so very sorry for what I did. It was most unbecoming of me–”

“Shut it. I’m a demon. I like unbecoming.”

“I see.” Another precarious silence. 

“I liked... kissing you,” Crowley said, harshly. “But not if I made you. Right?”

Aziraphale swallowed. “I’m not sure quite what you mean.”

“I need to know, if it was you, or if it was just... my temptation,” Crowley said, between gritted teeth. “Because if it was just that, then I’ll never say anything, and we can forget this whole thing, and I’ll...”

Aziraphale took a step closer. “You already know,” he said. “You didn’t make me do anything.”

There was something wretched in Crowley’s face, open and unguarded. 

“I could. I could... make you. Maybe I did. Without knowing.”

Again that hot current of electricity under his skin. Another choice. Another step closer. Reaching out again for what he wanted. 

“No, I don’t think you could. Not unless I wanted you to,” he said. He moved into the doorway properly now and put a hand out to brush his fingers against the soft skin of the crook of Crowley’s elbow.

“Do you?” Crowley asked, barely above a whisper. His eyes made Aziraphale feel as if he was falling, like gravity pulling him into the sun, an inevitable collapse. 

Aziraphale knew he should have walked away by now. “Yes.”

Crowley’s hands yanked him back inside the apartment, and into another kiss. The door shut behind him as Crowley pushed him up against it, pressing into him, mouth open and hot, demanding. 

He wrapped his arms around Crowley’s angular frame and finally slid his hands over his skin, sliding aside the strap of the dress so he could stroke a sharp shoulder blade. 

Crowley was licking into his mouth eagerly and making low noises of surprise or gratification, Aziraphale wasn’t sure, but he adored them, he adored the way Crowley tasted, some undefinable hint of charcoal and sweetness, smoke without bitterness. He adored the way the knots of his spine felt as he drew his hand along them, to the place where his wings were hidden from view. He skated his other hand along Crowley’s side, down to his hip, drawing him in closer. He adored the way he moved at his urging, pliant and obliging. 

It was like discovering a new chapter of a book he’d read a thousand times. (A forbidden chapter, a chapter that was never meant to be read – but he was going to read it this once. _Just this once.)_

“All right, angel?” Crowley asked, pulling away slightly. 

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, and then Crowley was kissing his neck, which he felt wasn’t entirely fair as Crowley’s neck was much nicer, and there was far more of it on display, and he’d been wanting to sink his teeth into the skin above his collarbones for millennia.

“You can tell me to stop,” Crowley whispered into his jaw. 

Aziraphale gave a tiny shake of his head. “I don’t think I shall.”

Crowley’s hands tugged at his jacket and he shed it obligingly, pulled off his tie, somehow shucked out of his waistcoat, all the while kissing Crowley back as furiously as he kissed in turn. 

It took some indeterminate amount of time fumbling like that to get away from the door and into another room, until Aziraphale found himself being backed into a bed. He sat down, heavily, reluctantly letting Crowley step back.

 _We’re doing this,_ he thought, stupefied for a moment by the sight of Crowley slipping the straps of the dress down his shoulders and then letting it pool at his feet. He was wearing a lacy black step-in underneath and Aziraphale could see his erection through the sheen of the fabric. He was... _doing this_ to Crowley, and Crowley wanted him to.

“Keep going?” Crowley asked again, as if he was reading his thoughts, voice rough in a way Aziraphale had never heard before.

“Yes,” he breathed. “Come closer?”

Crowley stepped closer, in between Aziraphale’s knees, and he reached out and slid his hands up the strip of Crowley’s skin above his stockings.

Then, daring, he traced his fingers over the outline of Crowley’s cock, and was gratified by the way he tensed under the touch. More daring still, he leaned forward and kissed him through the fabric, where wetness was blooming against the black. 

“Is that what does it for you, angel?” Crowley said, still in that low, almost pained voice. “All this time all I had to do to get your attention was dress up in some black knickers?”

_All this time._

Aziraphale rocked back. “I’m not the one who–” he started, and then stopped again, because Crowley had gone very still at that. He tried again. “After the park – I thought I might never see you again–”

Crowley made a noise, dismissive. “Don’t want to talk about that now,” he said, and kissed Aziraphale, hard, almost rough, hands pulling almost uselessly at his shirt buttons.

“Crowley, just–” he gasped and the demon muttered something and then the rest of their clothes were gone, and Aziraphale fell back on the bed, Crowley’s knees astride his hips. His hands were everywhere and then he reached down and slid his hand along Aziraphale’s cock, first an almost tentative touch and then firmer, with a twisting motion that made Aziraphale gasp up against Crowley’s shoulder. 

It felt better than Aziraphale had dared to imagine. “Darling,” he said, helplessly, and Crowley made an incoherent noise, and kissed him again, hand moving faster now, his grip harder.

Before he knew it Aziraphale was caught up in a perfect moment of sensation, coming all over Crowley’s hand and his own belly.

When he opened his eyes a moment later Crowley was staring at his face, his pupils wide in the molten gold of his eyes. 

“Fuck,” Crowley said, raggedly. 

“Yes, that,” Aziraphale said. “That’s what I want.”

“You want me to – fuck you?” 

“If you would like to,” Aziraphale said. He knew human bodies didn’t quite work this way, but he wasn’t human, he could do what he wanted, and he wanted Crowley inside him. _Just this once._

“I’ll do anything you want,” Crowley said, and that made Aziraphale’s heart clench. _Come back to London? Take me to lunch? Tell me you’d never use the holy water against yourself?_

“I want you inside me,” he said instead. 

“Right,” Crowley said, slowly. “Any particular... way?” 

The gentleness in his voice was almost too much, and Aziraphale pulled him down and kissed him again, slowly, letting himself enjoy the feel of Crowley’s bones pressed against his own softness, his mouth, the curl of his tongue. He ran his hands down Crowley’s body, slowly, along his ribs, felt the hard press of the other’s erection against his thigh. Then he rolled away, settled himself on hands and knees. Easier not to look at the expression on Crowley’s face directly.

“Angel,” Crowley said, almost desperately, ruinous, and then he was pressing wet kisses along Aziraphale’s spine. The sensation was enough to make him hard again, almost instantly. 

Crowley’s hand was on his hip, the other at the top of his thighs, and then he felt some slickness, and a finger tracing delicately around his rim. He was being so careful.

“I’m going to–” Crowley said, and the finger slid inside, and Aziraphale heard his own voice make a low surprised huff. “Should I stop?”

“Not at all.”

The slide and drag of it was almost painful, but just the right side of it, and then he felt the stretch of a second finger, heard Crowley take a shaky breath, and then ease his fingers in deeper, and deeper, against the exact place that made Aziraphale gasp. He couldn’t help himself from pushing back against the demon’s hand, wanting more.

“Fuck, angel... this is... Tell me, tell me that you like this?”

“Yes, yes,” he gasped – _just one moment, just now, one lapse after so long, please forgive me._ “Yes, this is lovely, it’s wonderful, please Crowley, I need more–”

Crowley pulled away, planted more hot kisses against his back. Then one of Crowley’s arms wrapped around his hips, and there was the pressure of his cock against him, and for a moment it was too much, and then Crowley was inside him, pushing in, deeper, slowly easing in until the bones of his hips pressed against Aziraphale’s skin. 

_We fit perfectly, this is wrong, we shouldn’t, but we fit as though She made us this way._

Crowley began moving in a way that precluded anything beyond the feeling of it, the pleasure of it, the sheer human reality of their bodies together like this. Slowly, and again with that terrible gentleness. How could he be so gentle? 

“Darling,” Aziraphale bit out. “You can go harder.”

Crowley stopped moving for a moment. “I’m trying not to be rough,” he said, sounding almost aggrieved, but then he pulled Aziraphale up so he sank back against him, back to chest, the demon’s wiry arms around him, hot smoke breath against his neck, and thrust into him with a force that made Aziraphale let out a shocked groan. 

“Keep going,” he said, afraid Crowley would take it the wrong way, but the demon moved again, and again and again. 

At the same time he gasped words that Aziraphale couldn’t let himself hear because they were too much like _I love you, I love you,_ until his movements grew jerky and he let out a low, almost angry groan in Aziraphale’s ear, and a hot pulse inside him. 

That was enough to send Aziraphale over the edge again, a searing wave through his whole body that seemed to go on far too long and not nearly long enough. 

He let his head fall back against Crowley’s shoulder, feeling the demon’s juddering heartbeat against his back. 

They stayed like that for a long time, as if they both knew as soon as they moved the headlong fall of the past few hours would be over.

Somehow they disentangled, though, and Aziraphale let himself lie back into the rumpled sheets. It was very dark and quiet now. Crowley snapped his fingers and the mess they’d made was gone, and then the demon slowly, almost tentatively, curled up against him. 

They didn’t speak, but Aziraphale put an arm around him and gave himself permission to touch his hair, and stroked it until Crowley’s breathing slowed and he fell asleep. 

Sometime after that the sky greyed and then lightened and dim winter light washed into Crowley’s bedroom.

Aziraphale finally forced himself to ease away, and stood up to find his clothes, and slowly dress himself.

He had to go. But he couldn’t stop himself from trying to memorize the outline of the Crowley’s lanky body in the bed. 

_I won’t see him like this again. I can’t allow it._

How was he supposed to walk out into the street and go on with his existence as though none of this had happened at all? And how could he _not,_ when the alternative would mean destruction for them both?

It wasn’t as if they could be together. 

His mind supplied images of a ridiculous domestic fantasy – a house somewhere, whitewashed walls, comfortable armchairs, a bedroom. Shared meals and glasses of wine. Sitting in a garden, reading a book, with Crowley’s head in his lap. A gramophone playing Tosca through an open window. A home. 

As if Crowley would want that, anyway. He imagined the demon’s uproarious laughter if he suggested something so utterly banal. 

“Demons don’t keep little cottages by the seaside, angel,” he’d say, or something near enough. 

He wasn’t sure where his hat was, but he supposed it didn’t matter. He took a tentative step to look out the window at the miserable dreary day, trying to gather the strength to start walking and refuse to stop.

“Were you going to at least leave a note?” Crowley said, and he started guiltily.

“I thought it might be better if I just left,” he said, watching Crowley sit up. He looked thoroughly debauched, kohl smudged around his eyes, red marks on his neck, hair an absurd tangle of garnet and rust. He’d never looked more beautiful. “Easier.”

Crowley’s mouth twisted. “Right. Course. Sorry to make it hard for you.” The cold, hard tone was back, nothing like the way he’d whispered last night. 

Aziraphale winced. He desperately wanted to kiss that sneer away but if he started he knew he’d never gather the strength again to leave. “I... I should go back to London today.”

“What about your job?” 

“I think I’ll let you have this round.”

“Ever the gentleman.”

That stung too. 

“You must understand,” Aziraphale said, trying to reach for the words that would make this easier, knowing they didn’t exist. 

“Of course I fucking understand, but I don’t have to like it,” Crowley snapped back. Then he made a disgusted sound, and stood up. “Better walk you to the station then,” he muttered, dressing himself with a snap of his fingers. 

It was a typically modish outfit, black coat with fur at the collar and cuffs, a black cloche hat, heels that bordered on ridiculous for the daytime. And the glasses were back on now. Armour. 

Aziraphale held the front door open for him, and they walked out into the dreary streets, quiet now after last night’s revelry, Crowley’s heels clicking on the pavement. 

They didn’t speak.

His apartment wasn’t far from the Zoo Bahnhof station and it didn’t take long. Aziraphale bought the ticket and they made their way to wait on the platform with a crowd of people shivering in the cold.

Crowley took out two cigarettes and lit them both at once with that lighter, the one that Aziraphale had given him thirty years before. He passed one to Aziraphale and then stood, smoking his own in that way he had of doing nearly everything, half a challenge and half something else.

“I’m so very glad you kept that,” Aziraphale said.

“Course I did,” Crowley said, putting it away in the pocket of his coat. “Thought I lost it once, but it turned up again. Little bit of a miracle, really.”

“It’s always... very pleasing... when something lost turns up again,” Aziraphale said, choosing his words carefully.

Crowley made a noncommittal hum, and took a drag of his cigarette.

“Will you come back to London soon?” Aziraphale said. One last reach towards the fruit, hanging low in the branches.

“Don’t know,” Crowley said, tilting his head back. “Should I?”

Was this the best Aziraphale could do, now, in the cold bright light? He couldn’t leave any evidence, couldn’t leave any incriminating marks or betraying signs.

“I hope so,” he said.

Crowley gave him the merest hint of a smile. “Right. See you then,” he said, and then he was gone. 

Somewhere a train rattled closer, the hum and shake of wheels over sleepers, the future coming down the line, and Aziraphale could only watch as Crowley walked away. 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Crowley in Berlin, 1929](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27437137) by [everybody_lives](https://archiveofourown.org/users/everybody_lives/pseuds/everybody_lives)




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